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Summary

This book presents a comprehensive, extended, and systematic analysis of social theory as it developed between the two World Wars, a period during which major transformation occurred. Centering on the continuities, on the one hand, and discontinuities on the other, in substantive theory, it deals with the major ideas of Cooley, Ellwood, Park, Thomas, Ogburn, Bernard, Chapin, Mead, Faris, Hankins, MacIver, Reuter, Lundberg, H. P. Becker, Parsons, Znaniecki, Sorokin, and Blumer. Finally, the problematic relevancy of the past for the present is directly confronted. The author examines how basic assumptions of theory in particular periods have used relatively unique schema and generated considerable controversy.

"This topic is significant. Although there are a number of books available on the Chicago school of sociology, the Hinkle book is much more comprehensive and thorough in dealing with the state of American sociological theory between the great wars. It also has the virtue of examining the influences of other academic disciplines on the development of American sociology which no other book does at present." -- Ellsworth R. Furman, Professor of Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Roscoe C. Hinkle is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the Ohio State University. He is the author of Founding Theory of American Sociology, 1881-1915.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: Orientation

1. Confronting Problems in the Study of Theory in American Sociology (1915/18-1945/50)

2. Three Epistemological-Methodological Stances

Part II: Continuities (With First-Period Theory)

3. Social Evolutionism, Social Origins, and Social Structure

4. Critique of Earlier Social Evolutionism and Its Legacy in the Second Period